Thursday, March 30, 2006

Toddler Chicks

The kids invited me into their class this morning so I could see the baby chicks. They're no longer babies though. I would say they're at least toddlers if not whatever designation comes after toddler (preschoolers?). I ended up with another 1 PM meeting today so once again I couldn't go home for lunch. Unfortunately I hadn't brought any lunch in, but luckily I was able to scavenge a sandwich that was leftover from some lunch time meeting.

I came home a bit earlier than usual today so the kids could go play outside (seems to be my normal thing to do lately). I had like an extra 15 minutes outside with them before it started getting dark tonight. Quinn started out on the scooter. After a couple of driveway runs he slammed it into my car as he was doing one of his leg lifting turns. Not too long after that he tried the leg lifting turn thing again and wiped.

Quinn wiped a couple more times, but those were intentional. And after he wiped out he would reenact the wipeout in slow motion, as he said "Just like they show on NASCAR races." Catherine finally made it outside about this time. Quinn took the tricycle at this point and Catherine actually used the scooter. She was very careful though and didn't fall. I tried the motion blur shots again. I don't think I was as successful this time.

Not too long after this Catherine got bored and switched to her bouncing soccer ball. That lasted all of 2 minutes before she got bored and went digging in the mulch again. She found a snake (ok, it was really an inchworm, but she was convinced it was a snake). Quinn switched over to playing football. It was one of the foam footballs, not a real one. He actually did a lot better at catching it than I thought he would. I wouldn't call him a prodigy or anything though, he was probably only catching like 25% of the ones I threw at him that were catchable.

We don't have any cherry trees in our yard. So our trees aren't quite as pretty yet since none of them have really started to open up. Maybe once it warms up a bit whatever type tree this is will eventually start to bloom.

4 comments:

Scott said...

That's a great looking tree picture. Really like it. Also, the Quinn wipeout set is pretty good.

Did you capture those pix from a video or do you have one of those superfast repeating shutters on your camera like they use on supermodels?

"Come on Quinn, work it out! Work it OUT! Yeah, baby! That's it! Crash for Daddy!"

JamesF said...

Fast shutter. That combined with the no delay when you press the button is why I went with the Nikon D70. Well, that and the six megapixel resolution. And that I could use all my old SLR lens.

My older digital cameras are good, but the 500 to 800 millisecond delay between pressing the button and when the picture would get taken was killing me. Even prefocusing I think the delay was still around 200 to 300 milliseconds.

And as for the tree picture. It's just because I'm competitive (or so someone said once).

BullBunky said...

You? Competitive?

I think the motion pics are going well for you. Of course, you have to give us some background for reference :) The Quinn one works really nicely.

And yes, I agree with Scott...the tree is nice.

JamesF said...

Ok, well the background is we were outside on our driveway. The kids were playing. Quinn was riding his tricycle and Catherine was riding her scooter.

Oh wait, you meant background in the pictures. For the record, the picture of Catherine on the Scooter wasn't a motion blur, just the one of Quinn was. That's why there's no background on the Catherine picture. My bad, I should have specified that a bit more clearly.